


The Inward Eye

by atreic



Category: The Unlit Lamp - Radclyffe Hall
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreic/pseuds/atreic
Summary: Being five ways Joan dreamed of being reunited with Elizabeth, and one way in which dreams were fulfilled.
Relationships: Joan Ogden / Elizabeth Rodney
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Inward Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss M (missm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/gifts).



The hours between tucking Master Rupert’s into bed with his last cup of Benger’s and Joan’s own bedtime were always the longest. Mrs Keith returned to her own family in the evenings, and The Pines settled down into a lonely echoing gloom. 

Each day at that time, Joan found herself lost with little to do. Without the distraction of tending to Master Rupert, the ghosts of the past returned to her. Hours of introspection, of recalling her slow decay from the strong-limbed, dark-haired, keen-minded child of her youth to this – a grey haired, stooped woman in her late 40s, alone and friendless, whose greatest interest was her aching legs. Her own company displeased her, and it was the only company she had, night after night. 

It was a notice in a magazine she was reading that started her on writing. A five-shilling prize for a short story. She bought a small notebook and a new pen (so strange at her age to reach a point where money was no problem, for her generous salary was in addition to her board and lodgings, and seldom got spent) and that evening, after Master Rupert drifted off to sleep (‘Just one more story, Joan, please?’) she sat at the desk in her bedroom, stared down at the crisp white paper, and started to write.

> Joan, I have realised I was terribly wrong.

Joan sat back from the notebook. Where had that come from? It was unlikely to win the five-shilling prize from Nash’s. An urge came over her to tear out the page and throw it straight into the fire. It was a stain on her soul to indulge in such bitterness and maudlin retrospection. Then she shook her head with a fierce laugh. She had no other uses for her soul than to watch it gently rot away into the damp embraces of The Pines. What more could they do to her? She dipped her pen again, and returned to the page.

> Joan, you must forgive me. Of course we should stay in Seabourne. Your sister is dead, and your mother needs you. I was wrong to think I should stand between such love. How could I have claimed to know you, to love you, and yet not embraced your filial piety as so intrinsic to your entire being? I was putting my needs before yours, to have you to myself, to live out my dreams through your youth. And it was so terribly unfair on you, my love, to be pulled between us like that. 
> 
> I have always talked of escape, of Seabourne as a snare, trapping us and denying us our full potential. But I who have both escaped and returned have always known it is not so simple as that. Wherever life sends us there is work to be done. We can build a life of sound minds and deep learning wherever we are together, we can work and save and put a little aside, you can care for your mother and continue to study. At some point you may need to take your degree, but I can nurse your mother while you are out of town, and the terms are very short. You would dare to leave for a little while, if you knew she was not alone and I was there to keep her well?
> 
> Lawrence proposed to me today. He wants me to go to South Africa and make a life with him. But I cannot accept him, for my place is with you, Joan. Let me live with you, let me help you as you nurse your mother, let me be a companion to you, let us grow old together, and I swear to you I shall not mind if we are in Cambridge or Seabourne, because Seabourne with you is sweeter than all the world’s learning without you. Do you remember that summer, when you were 21? When we would take the boat out at dawn, and all the world would be shining and new and spread out before us, full of endless possibilities? That is how the world is when we are together, and if that means living in Seabourne then so it shall be. Our love shall make a heaven of Seabourne. For I will have you, and that will be all I need, if you will have me, my darling. 
> 
> Your dearest, Elizabeth.

Joan clumsily wiped away a tear from the paper, smearing her pale imitation of the signature she had not seen for so long. Self-indulgent nonsense! Could she really imagine Elizabeth, her Elizabeth, Elizabeth full of intellect and passion and courage and discontent, ignoring her jealousy and her greed and settling down patiently to share Joan with her mother, and taking gentle strolls along the esplanade with her hand tucked through Joan’s arm every day?

She laughed a bitter laugh. Why, if she was going to indulge in cruel fantasies, she could do better than that.

> There was no better time for the conversation than after supper. “Mother, I want to tell you that I’m going to study to be a doctor. I’m going in for medicine”
> 
> “For _what_?” roared Colonel Ogden from his chair, rising unsteadily to his feet. “An indecent, unsexing, positively immodest profession for any woman! You will stay at home like any other girl until such time as you get married.” He reached a pitch of thunderous anger, and opened his mouth to berate her further, but the words did not come; instead he fell back limply in his chair. 
> 
> “I think you’ve killed your father,” said Mrs. Ogden unsteadily.
> 
> Joan went over and checked the prostrate man. There was no pulse. “I believe that I have” she said, before fainting clean away.
> 
> There were some that would have said how unseemly it was, to continue to pursue her professional dreams when the very thought of them had killed her own father, and indeed many did, in Seabourne. She saw them, whispering on corners, saw how young women would draw away from her in case her oddities were contagious. But what did she care what Seabourne thought of her? She had honours in her examinations, an income of a hundred and fifty a year, and the support of Elizabeth to drive her onwards.
> 
> There were no worries at home to hold her back. Her mother had blossomed since her father’s death, like a flower finally growing out into the sunshine after being long stifled by other plants. Freed from the tyranny of tending to her cantankerous invalid husband a new youth had come into her. No longer did she cling to Joan as her only rock in a painful world. The ladies of the town had reached out to comfort her, and widowhood had given her a new lease of life that marriage never had. Joan barely saw her, as she lunched with Lady Loo, visited the Bensons, and took to walking up the cliffs to Glory Point, to discuss the finer points of mouse breeding with Admiral Bourne. 
> 
> Joan passed the local examinations with ease, and took up her scholarship at Girton that Autumn. Elizabeth went with her on her first day, effortlessly explaining how everything would work, giving Joan a whirlwind tour of the strange new world that would become her life. Gyp rooms and p’lodges, porters and bedders, chapel and lab. The warm red brick walls of the college glowed in the soft sunlight filtered through the turning leaves. Joan had never seen anything that shone with more promise. 
> 
> The study was hard, but Elizabeth came up from the flat in London every weekend, breaking the monotony and encouraging Joan to live as well as work. They would go for long walks along the river, and as the seasons turned to summer they would spend hours swimming in the silken waters of the Cam, so different to the sea bathing of Joan’s youth. Sunlight and a million shades of green, the floating willowseed coating the world in drifting clouds of white, the joy that would spark between them at the sudden glimpse of a kingfisher.
> 
> Joan passed near the top of her class with honours, which came as no surprise to anyone but her. It was not so very difficult to find a London hospital to continue her studies at. The trepidation they may have felt at such a young woman entering such an unlikely career was mostly allayed by her exceptional results, and her keen mind, aptitude for hard work, and exceptionally smart collars and ties won over any remaining concerns. 
> 
> The work was hard, but worthwhile, and each evening she would return to that snug flat she shared with Elizabeth in Bloomsbury. Elizabeth’s job was stimulating, but with shorter hours than Joan’s work at the hospital, and so when Joan came home the kettle would be boiled and a bath already run. As the sun set over London, Joan lowered herself into the warm water with the deep sense of contentment that comes when rest follows honest hard work.

A pretty picture indeed! Elizabeth as cook, as housekeeper, Elizabeth reduced to the same role her mother had had, standing patiently on the sidelines and waiting on the master of the house! Why, she had not even deigned to imagine what work Elizabeth would be doing, while she chronicled her own meteoric rise. 

Still, the dream was very sweet indeed. One could rot one’s brain dreaming on nothing but sugar-coated might-have-beens. Shame on herself! If she was going to live in unlikely Happy Ever Afters, they could at least be ones where she benefitted from saving her family, not from killing them off even earlier. With shaking hand she turned over the notebook, and began again on a clean page. 

> Doctor Thomas looked round complacently. ‘Just as I thought, there’s nothing seriously wrong with Miss Mildred. A good rest, that’s all she needs.’
> 
> Joan knew in her bones that the old doctor was missing something. That night in desperation, she penned a letter to Richard. “Please come. Milly is terribly ill, and I don’t know what to do.”
> 
> Richard came on the first train the next morning, bringing with him a young lung specialist from Cambridge. Mrs Ogden refused to let them examine Milly at first, claiming with no sense of contradiction that the girl was entirely fine, and also in great need of rest, but Joan stood her ground. They waited together outside Milly’s room while the two doctors examined her. 
> 
> The news was not good. Joan expected it to settle on her like a weight, and yet somehow it was strangely freeing. To look death in the eye, and not dance around the truth in lies. “Your sister is in consumption. But the disease is not much progressed, we have caught it early and her lungs are still sound.”
> 
> The specialist from Cambridge had trained under a yet more eminent specialist in Davos Platz, and since those years had been seeking a similar location to make his fame and fortune. The brisk sea air of Seabourne sang to him in the way the clammy fenland fogs never could, and in Milly’s exquisite doll-like beauty he saw an opportunity. “Mrs Ogden. I am prepared to treat your daughter for little more than board and lodgings, if you will consent to do as I say in the matter of her cure.” Mrs Ogden looked reluctant, the specialist’s airy confidence taking her back to the last days of her husband’s life. Yet caught between Joan and Richard there was little she could do to resist.
> 
> Under the good doctor’s expert ministrations, Milly turned a corner. Slowly but surely, her haggard flesh filled out once more, until her sweet golden curls regained their bounce and her brown eyes sparkled with life again. Papers were written. Milly was taken to London and exhibited, charming all who met her. The good doctor rented a large house and admitted the first patients to Seabourne Sanatorium, with the income they brought financing his long-term project of a custom building further along the coast road. 
> 
> And it was not only Milly who was filled with the flush of renewed life. The work at the Sanatorium had brought a focus and a health to Joan as well. Abstract medical questions now had human faces and pressing timescales. Papers in French, papers in German, microbiology and immunology; Joan had found a calling and a passion. She would work late, Elizabeth beside her, puzzling over the intricate details of the body’s working, coming up with new theories to test in the cures of the Sanatorium. 
> 
> One night, she woke from sleep to find a rough hand stroking her hair. “Joan. Shh. You fell asleep at your papers.” 
> 
> Joan looked up to find the last of the candle light flickering over Elizabeth’s face. “I’m sorry. I just feel we’re so near now. To a cure, or if not a cure, at least a vaccine.”
> 
> Elizabeth smiled at her. “You have nothing to apologise for. I remember you as a child, and remember how desperately I wanted you to get free, to find a life beyond Seabourne, where you could work and be independent and happy. How naïve I was! Sometimes the thing we would travel the greatest distance to find is exactly where we started out. When I see you working at the Sanatorium – oh Joan, you are all you were born for! Your passion and dedication, making the world better for all our patients, and for thousands yet unknown who could be spared by a cure!”
> 
> Joan reached out and grasped Elizabeth’s hand in her own, stroking the old scars with delicate fingers. “My Elizabeth. I could never have done it without you. You complete me.” She drew her closer to her, planting a firm kiss on her smooth brow. “We must go to bed now. For there is much to be done in the morning!”

Joan smiled at the thought. The Mildred Ogden Memorial Sanatorium, famed throughout the world as the place where Miss Mildred’s sister Joan made the first significant breakthrough to a cure for the consumption. But the ghost of Milly in her head would not let her rest on her laurels.

“Really Joan, even when you’re saving me, you still make it sound like I died! The Mildred Ogden Memorial Sanatorium indeed. It’s ridiculous.” Joan’s memory of Milly shook her head and tossed her curls with a pout. “If you’re going to play this game, I would much rather not get the consumption in the first place. Let _me_ try…” 

Joan turned the page and began to write once more.

> Joan smiled to see another missive from her sister in the letter-box. Milly wrote regularly from Alexandra House, letters full of enthusiasm. She had risen in the ranks of the college orchestra and was now principal second, pouring her passion out into her music and being well rewarded. 
> 
> _“My dear Joan,_
> 
> _You will not believe the news! There has been a great sickness throughout London this winter, and with the shortage of fiddle players the greater orchestras are needing to reach out to a few of the finest scholars from the colleges. And Joan, the London Phil. has chosen me! They are touring the Eastern Seaboard for the season, and the boat sails a week on Monday. New York, Joan! Picture it! The programme is exquisite, the sort of music that makes you sad and angry and refreshed all at the same time. I shall meet so many people, it is a unique opportunity. Why, if all goes well, the Phil. might keep me on!_
> 
> _You must come to London at once. We will be able to acquire all you need for the journey once you are here, the Phil. have given me an advance and I will be able to fit you out quite charmingly.”_
> 
> Joan shook her head in confusion, and re-read the paragraph more slowly. Of course, as an unmarried woman, the orchestra would expect Milly to travel with a chaperone. Milly! Always putting her own needs first, as though Joan was doing nothing in Seabourne but waiting to be summoned to her side. 
> 
> _“Bring Elizabeth, if it helps you continue your studies while you are out here; the boat is booked as cabins, so if the two of you are content to squeeze in tight the orchestra will not mind. But come as soon as you can, Joan. Mother will be fine for a little while without you, she is much taken up with her church work at the moment._
> 
> _I’ll expect you on the first train on Thursday, the orchestra will send someone to the station for your trunk._
> 
> _Your sister,_
> 
> _Milly”_
> 
> Mrs Ogden was not pleased with the plan. But she could see that this was Milly’s great chance, and the thought of Milly unchaperoned in America was even more upsetting to her than being parted from Joan for a few months. With a trembling hand and sad eyes, she reluctantly gave her blessing to the enterprise.
> 
> Joan ran round to Elizabeth’s. “Elizabeth! We must leave Seabourne, immediately!”
> 
> Elizabeth appeared with a guarded wry smile. “I’m delighted you seem so enthusiastically back on board with the plan, but the London flat is let until March now.”
> 
> With her usual gruff bluntness, Joan explained. “So you see, we can sail a week on Monday, our passage and lodgings will be covered, and Milly won’t need much support. She’ll be in her element. Say you’ll come, Elizabeth, please? Imagine it – our snug cabin where we can curl up tight, the endless ocean all around, and then a new land, Elizabeth, the other side of the world, all ours to explore together”
> 
> Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled. “What a Boston marriage we shall make of it, Joan! I shall pack immediately.”

Joan’s mind raced with where to take the story next. Did they ever return from the Americas? Maybe they lived out their lives in a chic city centre flat, lunching at the Bohemian Club, studying at Harvard or Yale. Maybe they went out west, living a frontier life full of hard but rewarding work. Joan imagined herself chopping logs, salting bacon, doctoring to a small community of roughly educated folk with hearts of gold. There were so many possible happy endings, with Elizabeth beside her. 

Then she thought of her mother, waiting at home for a ship that never returned, carefully smoothing out the letters from America, having lost her daughters as surely as if tubercle had taken them both. Poor mother! Life had taken so much from her, leaving her faded like a pressed flower. Why did the happy endings for Joan and Elizabeth always have to leave Mary Ogden bereft? 

> Joan gathered her courage together. She could stay in Seabourne no longer. She was withering on the vine, the frosts would take her buds before they had ever blossomed. Elizabeth could not wait for her forever. The conversation with her mother would not be easy, but it was necessary.
> 
> Mrs Ogden was in the drawing room, the trappings of her new Anglo-Catholicism sitting uneasily amongst the pink curtains and chairs and the turquoise blue tiles. Her fingers moved smoothly and contentedly along the beads of her rosary.
> 
> “Ah, Joan. We need to talk.”
> 
> It was true, but Joan had not expected to hear it from her mother. 
> 
> “We must end the lease on Leaside. Father Cuthbert has had a vision.” Mary’s face was calm and very serious. It was all Joan could do to suppress the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside.
> 
> “A vision, mother?”
> 
> “Yes. Our Lady came to him in a dream. She showed him a vision of me in Seabourne, trapped in chains. Then her light came around me like a dazzling blue star, and the chains fell away like snow.”
> 
> Joan found herself strangely jealous. All these years she had dreamed of escape, and would it have been this easy, for some pale ascetic clergyman to persuade her mother of the need for it? “And what does this vision say we must do, Mother?”
> 
> “Why, is it not as clear to you as it was to us? Father Cuthbert and I must go to Lourdes. I will bathe in the springs, and the chains of my life in Seabourne will fall away in the healing waters. I will be made whole and young again.”
> 
> “But surely after that you will need a home?”
> 
> “There will be no returning to Seabourne for me. The vision was clear on that point. Father Cuthbert has a holy calling. Our Lady has a sacred place within these isles, at Walsingham. The shrine was ruined in the dissolution of the monasteries, but nothing can destroy the call of Our Lady to her faithful believers. She has appointed Father Cuthbert to be her minister to her sheep, to go to Walsingham, raise up a shrine to her in the True Church, and welcome her pilgrims. And she has appointed me to be his bosom companion, the Eve to his Adam, tending to him when the yoke of his ministry weighs heavily on him.”
> 
> A kind of holy ecstasy had fallen on Mrs Ogden. She glowed with beatific radiance. Joan was frankly baffled. A Routledge, marrying a humble clergyman! Her mother, finally appearing happy and fulfilled, no longer clinging to Joan as a drowning woman clutches at driftwood! From the depths of her confusion a giddy happiness began to rise. The Reverend and Mrs Cuthbert Jackson! May their marriage be long, happy, and far far away from Seabourne!
> 
> “Congratulations on your engagement, Mother. I am very pleased for you.”
> 
> “We will need to sell all of this. What use have I for elephants' feet and polo cups in Walsingham? Hopefully it will release enough for you to make a good start, Joan, to study at Cambridge, to take that little flat in London you were always so keen on.”
> 
> How easily the deeply entrenched battlegrounds of decades are re-carpeted in smooth green grass! The sea whose waves could shake the foundations of cliffs is calmed in the sunshine to millpond smoothness. Barricades that have shaped lives for decades melt away like morning mist. Those bitter wars with Elizabeth for her daughter’s heart meant nothing to Mrs Ogden now, they were as shadows destroyed by the radiant beams of her newfound love and calling.
> 
> “I will visit you, Mother”
> 
> “I know you will, Joan, I could not ask for a better daughter. And now, could you send the maid up? We will need to start an inventory, and set all in motion for my pilgrimage.”
> 
> Joan ran down the stairs with a youthful spring in her step that she had not felt for many years. Her heart sang with her freedom, and the world spread wide its arms to welcome her. “Elizabeth, I am coming! I am free at last, and wholeheartedly yours!”

Joan put down the pen with sore fingers. The first strands of light had started to dance in the eastern sky, and it was only an hour before Master Rupert would be wanting his hot milk with coffee. Had she really written all through the night? She reached out to close the notebook, but the last two lines of her writing confronted her, bold black ink stark against the cream paper. 

> Elizabeth, I am coming. I am free at last, and wholeheartedly yours.

When Mrs Keith came in later that morning, Joan had already composed her notice. “I do regret that I’m not able to stay longer. Of course I will remain for a month, to allow you to find someone else.”

“Oh, but Miss Ogden, how Master Rupert will miss you! He is so very fond of you. We thought you were settling in so splendidly well.” 

Joan did not think Master Rupert thought much of her at all, but he was very fond of Bobbie. And the canary would not do well with a long sea voyage. 

So arrangements were made, the new girl hired to take Joan’s place, and Master Rupert was left with Bobbie singing cheerfully from his finger. He seemed placid and content, secure in the knowledge there would be beef-tea at four each day and no changes from the world outside would disturb his sanctuary.

Joan did not look back when she left The Pines. She did allow herself that indulgence from the deck of the ship as she sailed out of Southampton. It was a damp day with a thin drizzle, and her last glimpse of England was the sight of the Needles, barren and grey in the mist. They stood up from the sea like tombstones, and Joan’s thoughts turned again to that prim cemetery in Seabourne, where her parents and sister lay in their final sleep. Were they at peace now? Well, there was nothing more she could do for them. 

The two weeks of journey to Cape Town passed swiftly. It was late afternoon as the ship turned into the bay. Joan watched the seals frolicking around the prison on Robben Island, and looked up at the great wall of Table Mountain. Despite the blue and cloudless sky, a sheet of white cloud clung to its summit like a snowy tablecloth. It rippled and flowed, caught in the same invisible breezes that tugged at Joan's hair as she watched it draw nearer. As the sun fell lower, the clouds caught the evening light, until the summit of the mountain was crowned with orange and pink. A mountain on fire. Joan looked on warily. A welcome, or a warning? Still, the beauty took her breath away.

The ship docked late in the evening, and Joan took simple rooms near the harbour, and passed a restless night fretfully dozing. She dressed carefully in the morning, brushing her hair until the grey shone again as the black had when she was a youth, and taking an unconscionable time over her tie. As she stepped out of her lodgings the warm air hit her like a wall, laced with the pungent scent of the fynbos. She felt so very far away from Seabourne, and faltered suddenly. Why was she here, an old woman on a fool's errand? She rested and stared out to the sea. The regular sound of the waves steadied her mind, their rhythm an echo of her teenage years when the waves would roll in as she walked down the esplanade arm in arm with Elizabeth.

She was an incongruous sight on the streets of Cape Town in her crisp collar and soft felt hat. But she was impervious to the stares of the local youths, as she strode up to the grand white mansion and knocked on the door.

She was expecting a maid, and had carefully rehearsed her initial speech in her head. The words vanished when the door was opened by Lady Benson herself. Older, plumper, with hair a silvery white, but the same mysterious mouth, the same horrific scars on her hands, and the same green eyes that had so entranced Joan when she was thirteen. Elizabeth.

Joan stuttered out a few gruff words. “I left Seabourne. It took longer than expected.”

There was an awkward pause. The twenty years that had passed since they had parted hung heavily between them.

“Joan. I left you with a letter, saying that I must forget you, asking you not to write to me.”

Joan looked ashen, but valiantly continued her petition. “Well, technically I haven’t written.”

Elizabeth laughed then, a sunny laugh so unexpected that Joan was moved to laugh with her. Their peals of mirth entwined around each other, as they had laughed so many times as careless girls, walking on the downs above Seabourne. 

“In that case you had better come in.”

Joan stepped inside the house. A portrait of Lawrence Benson gazed down at her, his pince-nez contrasting with the elaborate regalia of his baronetcy. Joan faltered. The grand hallway full of antique furniture felt oppressive and dark.

Elizabeth caught her eye. "We are not all we were when we were young," she said, gently resting her hand on Joan's arm. It bore the old scars, and the papery skin showed new signs of ageing. Yet all Joan felt was an ageless sense of rightness, of finally coming home.


End file.
